The Charlotte News
Monday, November 15, 1954
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator McCarthy this date accused Senator Arthur Watkins of Utah, chairman of the six-Senator select committee which had unanimously recommended censure of the Senator, of being "derelict in his duty" by saying that he did not know if anyone had been at fault in the case of the Army Reserve dentist who had been promoted from captain to major and then honorably discharged from the Army after having pleaded the Fifth Amendment before Senator McCarthy's Investigations subcommittee regarding questions of his past association with subversive organizations. Senator Watkins retorted, "I don't believe you can ever be satisfied unless you can find somebody who could be shot or hung." The two Senators had confronted one another at a suddenly called hearing of the Investigations subcommittee, scheduled by Senator McCarthy in an effort to discover whether Senator Watkins could shed any light on who was responsible for the promotion and honorable discharge of the dentist. Senator Watkins said that the way to fix responsibility was to question 30 Army officers whose names had been submitted to the subcommittee the previous June by Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens, who had advised that the list included all officers involved in the case of the dentist's promotion and discharge. Senator Watkins maintained that it could not be determined who was responsible for the discharge. Senator McCarthy had responded that "many young men will die" because of traitors, who should be "shot and hung". (Both forms of capital punishment seem a little excessive.) The Senator said that it was "no laughing matter" when "secret masters in the military" cover up for Communists. Senator Watkins said that he was not laughing and that the record and the picture would so show. Senator McCarthy said that a Senator who represented Utah and claimed not to know if someone ought to be blamed for promoting a man who owed allegiance to a foreign country and was a traitor to his country, certainly was "derelict in his duty and that is putting it very mildly." Senator Watkins said repeatedly that only a jury of one's peers could convict a spy and that accusations could not serve as grounds for action. Meanwhile, on the Senate floor, debate continued on the censure resolution.
In Cairo, Maj. General Mohamed Naguib had been ousted as the President of Egypt by a ruling military junta the previous day, with Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser assuming the duties of President. General Naguib, who had been the popular hero of the 1952 revolution against former King Farouk, was charged with being involved in a recent, unsuccessful plot by the fanatical Moslem Brotherhood to attempt the assassination of Premier Nasser, and was placed under house arrest in a Government house outside Cairo. A long rivalry between the two men had flared into an open struggle for power the previous spring, with Premier Nasser emerging as the nation's strong-man ruler, while General Naguib became only a figurehead President. Cairo remained calm this date, but with a tense atmosphere. Two civilians had been killed and two policemen seriously wounded in a clash early the previous day, before the ouster of General Naguib, in suburban Heliopolis, the fighting, according to a Government spokesman, having erupted when police closed in on a fugitive leader of the Moslem Brotherhood's secret order and his guards had sought to clear the way for his escape, using machine guns and hand grenades. That leader had been taken into custody, and, according to the Government, had confessed that General Naguib had approved a Brotherhood plot to kill Premier Nasser and take over the Government. After that confession, the ten Army officers who made up the revolutionary council met in an emergency session and assigned two officers for the purpose of notifying General Naguib of his ouster, as the Army raised a heavy guard around his official residence. General Naguib was then escorted by the officers to a home eight miles from the capital. A special Cabinet meeting approved the council's action. There was no outward show of emotion by the populace the previous day. Premier Nasser's heroic status with the people had increased since an assassin sought to kill him while he was speaking in Alexandria on October 26, with eight shots having missed him. The Government, which accused the Moslem Brotherhood of instigating the plot, had arrested 700 members, and the previous week, one of the prisoners had testified that General Naguib had promised to make a broadcast to calm the population should Premier Nasser be killed. No action had been taken against General Naguib based on that testimony, but he had been considered under suspension as President.
The House Campaign Investigating Committee voted this date for a full-scale investigation of complaints of election irregularities in Congressional districts in North Carolina and Illinois, the North Carolina district in question being the ninth, where Democratic incumbent, Hugh Alexander, had been declared the winner over Williams Stevens. The previous week, a man from Winston-Salem had charged in testimony before the Committee that there had been vote-buying, coercion, misuse of the absentee ballot, double registration and negligence on the part of election officials in that district.
North Carolina filed its brief with the Supreme Court this date in the implementing decision of Brown v. Board of Education, set for oral argument on December 6. The brief sought time to carry into effect the decision of the Court, which had held the prior May 17 that continued segregation of the public schools would no longer pass muster under the Constitution's 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause, overruling the old separate-but-equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, decided in 1896. The brief argued that if desegregation were put into effect immediately, it could cause "racial bitterness" and even abolition of the public schools by the State. It urged that Federal District Court judges be provided wide discretion to supervise the change to integrated schools, with due regard for local conditions, that such conditions changed within North Carolina and were different from those in other states, causing a blanket order to be impracticable. Among the Assistant Attorneys General who signed the brief along with Attorney General Harry McMullan, was I. Beverly Lake, who would run unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary as a segregationist candidate for governor in 1960 against Terry Sanford, and would subsequently be appointed to the State Supreme Court in 1965 by Governor Dan K. Moore, who would also become a member of the Court after his term of office. The brief proposed no particular plan of implementation and indicated that it was being submitted to show the "unparalleled gravity of nullifying the Constitution and laws of the state", "affecting its most cherished, important, and expensive enterprise, its public schools", and to indicate that subsequent decrees of the Court ought allow the greatest possible latitude to the Federal District Court judges in its implementation. The brief included exhibits providing answers to questionnaires sent out to county and city school superintendents and police officials around the state, with a large majority of the answers having indicated that immediate desegregation would not work and could lead to violence.
In Farmington, W. Va., an attempt to rescue 15 coal miners, or recover their bodies, had to be abandoned the previous night because of escaping deadly methane gas, preventing further efforts and requiring that the entrances to the mine be sealed. One of the miners was known to have died, and 15 remained missing and were presumed dead, following a violent explosion on Saturday and then a second explosion that night, sending flames out of the ventilation shaft. A third, smaller explosion had occurred on Sunday evening. The sealing of the mine was an effort to cut off the flow of air and smother the fire which was burning deep underground, an effort which had been completed the previous night. The mine would not be reopened until tests demonstrated that the air inside was safe enough for rescue teams to enter, possibly days or months hence. UMW head, John L Lewis, had approved the sealing of the five entrances after spending two hours at the scene the previous day, indicating that sealing the mine appeared to be the only course available. He commended officials directing the rescue operation. No one could say what had caused the initial explosion.
In Washington, the Government agreed this date to take no steps toward deportation of singer Dick Haymes, pending full court review of the case. Mr. Haymes was married to actress Rita Hayworth.
In Los Angeles, the airliner Royal Viking had taken off early this date to begin the first commercial transpolar passenger service between Los Angeles and Copenhagen. The DC-6B plane was flown by Scandinavian Airlines, and the maiden flight carried actors Jean Herscholt and Walter Pidgeon, plus public officials and two dozen members of the press, after the plane was christened by dancer-actress Cyd Charisse just before takeoff, using the traditional champagne bottle. During this evening, a similar plane would take off from Copenhagen, headed west. The eastbound plane would make the 5,800-mile journey in about 22 hours, while the westbound flight, because of facing prevailing westerly winds, would take about 25 hours, due in Los Angeles the following day. There was a nine-hour time difference between Denmark and the West Coast. The practicability of the flight had been established by six exploratory flights by the airline, with its only stops being at Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Bluie West 8, an airfield in Greenland. No one had said what military significance the transpolar route had, but the reporter indicates that undoubtedly it had some. Scandinavian Airlines had been a consortium of Swedish, Norwegian and Danish airlines since 1946, and would be southern California's first direct link with Europe. The Arctic route was 600 miles shorter than the usual route via New York, with stops in New York generally requiring at least an estimated seven hours. The two planes would course the route twice weekly each way and would carry 32 passengers and a crew of ten on each flight. A sleeping berth would cost $50 each way, in addition to the round-trip fare of $1,034.50, in case you want to book a flight. Each plane could carry up to a ton of cargo.
In Montréal, Canadian television was presenting every Wednesday night "La Familie Plouffe" and every Thursday "The Plouffe Family", the same show with the same cast, the first in French and the second in English. The 25 actors rehearsed the scripts simultaneously in both languages. After the French version the previous season had been critically acclaimed, the tobacco company sponsor decided to air it also in English. The writer of the scripts for the show was Québec novelist Roger Lemelin. French-speaking Canadians had liked the show because they recognized a lot of their own qualities and quirks in the characters, and the producers now faced the problem of establishing the same atmosphere in English.
In Charlotte, an accountant suggested this date that the County Courthouse basement space, currently used for the temporary County Police Jail, should be utilized to alleviate crowded conditions in the County Tax Collector's office. Failure to resolve that crisis could result in a world war, and so you had better hurry it up.
On the editorial page, "Abolition of Sales Tax Exemptions Would Help Solve Financial Puzzle" indicates that in State Government circles, the predominant question was where would money derive to support the needs of the state, with no one yet having developed a solution. The Advisory Budget Commission was working on the problem and would produce ideas by December 15, but it would still be up to new Governor Luther Hodges to make his own decision on the matter for presentation to the 1955 General Assembly in his biennial budget message early in the coming year.
It provides detail of the revenues which were failing to keep pace with expenditures, concluding that the sales tax law, to provide much of the shortfall in revenue, should not have carved into it too many exemptions but rather should be equally enforced, that the government was everybody's business and the support of government was everybody's responsibility.
"Neither Flies nor Strings on Hodges" indicates that Governor Hodges had gotten off to a good start in his office, having succeeded the late Governor William B. Umstead, who had died a week earlier. He had indicated to department heads that he wanted them to remain on the job as long as they did as the people of the state expected. He canceled public engagements for 60 days so that he would be able to acquaint himself with his new responsibilities, indicating that later, he hoped to get around the state. He announced plans for holding two press conferences per week, and, according to Raleigh observers, was absorbing the details of his job quickly and making decisions promptly. He had promised that there would be a "minimum of political turn" to his decisions and actions, which appeared consistent with his campaign promises while running for lieutenant governor in 1952, that he owed no favors to any faction or pressure group, a position he appeared to have maintained.
It finds that the new Governor's greatest virtue was that there were no strings attached to him, but that it would also possibly become his greatest obstacle in working with the 1955 General Assembly. There were skilled politicians in the Legislature, desirous of advancing interests of their different factions, and the Governor's major task would come during the winter, that if he could obtain the support of the Assembly, prospects for sound and progressive legislative accomplishment appeared excellent.
A piece from the Twin City Sentinel of Winston-Salem, titled "Did the Rustlers Win?" wonders where all the cows were in the cowboy pictures that they saw all the time, now being shown on television. If one passed through the room where the children were attentive to the television screen, one would see and hear running horses, shooting, fights, struggles on cliffs, barroom scraps, melodious singing with guitar accompaniment, scenes of boys meeting girls, cowboys, cowboy boots, pistols, bad men, sheriffs, and cattle rustlers—but no cows.
It suggests that perhaps the West was showing too much of its wild and woolly side, such that the viewer did not obtain a true picture of the life of a cowboy, who used to punch cattle, while the cattle were now vanishing from the screens. It ventures that perhaps the rustlers had made off with them.
Don't worry, speaking of "woolly", a new sitcom down the way will come to the rescue of greater cinema verite. Head 'em up, move 'em out...
Drew Pearson indicates that if Justice-nominate John Harlan were anything like his grandfather of the same name, who had served on the Supreme Court from 1877, appointed by President Rutherford B. Hayes, until his death in 1911, the grandson would become a top new Justice. He indicates that the elder Harlan had been a julep-drinking Kentuckian, who owned slaves, but battled for the cause of blacks, both as a member of the Union Army and as a Supreme Court Justice, notably being the lone dissent in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case which established the separate-but-equal doctrine for enabling segregation to pass muster under the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause. He had also written a dissent in the Civil Rights Cases in 1883, the first major inroad on the 14th Amendment, holding unconstitutional parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, giving equal privileges to blacks in inns, public conveyances and theaters, the majority decision having been written by Justice Joseph Bradley of New Jersey, who, obviously, was not a slaveholder—which leads to the idiotic nature of the notion that slaveholders should be obliterated from U.S. history, their representations in statuary removed unceremoniously, solely because of their slaveholding, irrespective of the times in which they lived and irrespective of their actual views on slavery in the broader context and their impact in eradicating the peculiar institution rather than propagating it, utilizing at least a smidgen of common sense in the process of evaluation while seeing matters in a larger perspective than afforded through the narrow lens of race, lest some historical moron propose changing the name of Washington, D.C., to Hooverville—but we digress.
Justice Harlan had written in his dissent in the Civil Rights Cases: "Constitutional provisions adopted in the interest of liberty, and for the purpose of securing liberty … have been so construed as to defeat the ends the people desired to accomplish, and which they supposed they had accomplished by changes in their fundamental law… It is for Congress, not the judiciary to say what legislation is appropriate… The judiciary may not, with safety to our institutions, enter the domain of legislative discretion and dictate the means which Congress shall employ in the exercise of its granted power. The right of a colored person to use an improved highway upon the terms accorded to free men of other races, is as fundamental in the state of freedom established in this country, as are the rights which my brethren concede to be so far fundamental as to be deemed the essence of civil liberty."
Justice Harlan had also supported the constitutionality of the income tax when it had initially been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1895, prior to the 1909 Sixteenth Amendment specifically authorizing the income tax, ratified in 1913, and had delivered an opinion in the Northern Securities Co. case, placing railroads under the jurisdiction of the antitrust laws.
Mr. Pearson, incidentally, confused the Civil Rights Cases of 1883 with U.S. v. Harris, also decided in 1883, which held unanimously that one of the early "anti-Klan" Federal statutes, the one in question having been passed in 1861, was unconstitutional for lack of power of Congress to pass the act, encroaching on states' rights because it sought to regulate private conduct of individuals, not just state action, as the Fourteenth Amendment regulates to ensure equal protection and due process by the states. That theory would later be superseded by recognition that such regulation can take place by virtue of the power vested in Congress to regulate interstate commerce, that activities of private individuals which substantially affect interstate commerce are subject to Federal regulatory powers. The Court in the Civil Rights Cases specifically excepted the possibility that Congress could enact such laws as at issue in those cases under the Commerce Clause, indicating that the issue was not before the Court, viz.: "And whether congress, in the exercise of its power to regulate commerce among the several states, might or might not pass a law regulating rights in public conveyances passing from one state to another, is also a question which is not now before us, as the sections in question are not conceived in any such view." There was also incorporated into decisions a better understanding of the history and reasons for the civil rights statutes, as time transpired and inventions such as the automobile made such transgressions against individual rights and liberties secured by the Constitution more easily accomplished with impunity in small towns where the law looked the other way or even participated, actively or tacitly, in the transgressions, making local enforcement of state laws unlikely and by that misprision, rendering Federal Constitutional rights meaningless and unenforceable, at the whim of the local sheriff and his deputies or the local police chief, a government by men rather than laws, the exact opposite of the intention of the Founders—such private fiefdoms also intruded by the modern device of television cameras to expose to revulsion the invidious effects on the broader society from the version of local justice postulated as appropriate by the ancien regime. Thus, in 1968, broader legislation for prosecution of interference with Federally protected rights was enacted, with much stiffer penalties for violation, including life imprisonment or the death penalty, when death results from the interference.
Air Force officers, the column continues, were angry about the way the President had shrugged off the latest incident involving two Russian jets shooting down the RB-29 photo reconnaissance plane over Hokkaido in Japan, with the President having conceded that the plane was flying over a disputed area of islands claimed by both Japan and Russia at the time, though the U.S. did not recognize the Russian claims. The Air Force asserted that by the same token, the open seas could be regarded as "disputed territory" for 100 miles out from Siberia, based on Russian claims, as well as the Arctic Ocean all the way to the North Pole, also claimed as Soviet territory. Air Force generals therefore warned that such tacit recognition could invite attack by Russian planes in those areas, with one top general charging privately that it appeared that the President was committed to a policy of peace at any price.
Close friends of outgoing House Speaker Joe Martin were saying that he would like to step aside as House leader of the Republicans when the new Congress convened in January. He was discouraged about Republican loss of control of the House and at age 70, his years were beginning to weigh on him. If he decided to step down, there would be an intra-party battle over his possible successor, as the House Whip, Congressman Charles Halleck of Indiana, was not as popular as Mr. Martin. To prevent the fight, friends had been pleading with Mr. Martin not to step aside and to remain as party leader for at least one more term.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop indicate that, notwithstanding the public expressions of desire to work with the White House and the Republicans, the Democrats in Congress were out for revenge for the campaign rhetoric which had labeled the Democrats the party of Communism and war, especially prominent in the speeches of Vice-President Nixon. As a result, they would engage in a public exposé of every bit of Republican dirty laundry they could find. In the words of one Democratic strategist, "We'll investigate the living daylights out of the Republicans."
They provide an incomplete list of the intended investigations by the Democrats, starting with "the numbers racket" regarding "security risks" fired from the Government, with the claim of the Republicans having been that the varying numbers they contended were such firings represented Democratic softness on Communism. The Civil Service Committee, to be chaired by Senator Olin Johnston of South Carolina, would be expected to review the whole Government security program, with an eye toward proving that Republican claims of having found a government crawling with subversives were phony.
They would also investigate the Dixon-Yates contract with the Atomic Energy Commission, with the incoming chairman of the joint Atomic Energy Committee to be Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, who did not have the same friendly admiration for AEC chairman Lewis Strauss which the outgoing Republican chairman of the joint committee, Representative Sterling Cole, had.
Another investigation of that same matter would take place not only anent Messrs. Dixon and Yates and their companies, but also regarding public utilities generally, likely to be undertaken by the anti-monopoly subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to be chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee.
The Judiciary Committee would also investigate U.S. Attorney Leo Rover's unprecedented action in moving for Federal Judge Luther Youngdahl to recuse himself in the case involving Owen Lattimore, charged in a second indictment with perjury regarding prior testimony before a Senate committee, in which he had denied having Communist sympathies. The recusal motion was based on alleged bias of the judge, after he had dismissed the major counts of the first indictment because of their vagueness. The main target of that investigation would be Attorney General Herbert Brownell, who had lost all favor among Democrats since he had raised the matter of the late Harry Dexter White the previous fall, indicating that the Truman Administration had retained him in the Treasury Department after having information that he was a Russian espionage agent, brought out in HUAC hearings in August, 1948, shortly after which Mr. White died of natural causes.
It would also be likely that the old subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, previously chaired by Senator Harry Truman, was likely to be reinvigorated to examine defense contracts, especially those let to General Motors, whose former head was Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson. There would also be investigations of defense waste, in an attempt to prove that Secretary Wilson and his Republican colleagues in the Defense Department had no lock on efficiency. One Democrat had remarked that they would "find plenty of oyster forks", a reference to spending for unnecessary items.
Finally, they list a prospective investigation of unfair political practices, starting with a recording which had been disseminated by the RNC, in which a mysterious gentleman said, in a fake Russian accent: "Defeat the Republican Congressional candidate in 1954. That is our order from Moscow. Return America to a New Deal type administration. Moscow orders that!"
Robert C. Ruark tells of hating to see time pass, reminded of it by nightclub singer Libby Holman being back in the news for returning to the stage to sing, and by Bucky Harris having left Washington to manage the Detroit Tigers at age 58, Mr. Ruark saying that he remembered both as little better than adolescents.
He says that Ms. Holman had provided quite a bit of newspaper copy when he was in college, regarding the shooting death of her young husband, Smith Reynolds, in Winston-Salem in 1932, a scandal having developed as to whether he was murdered or had committed suicide. At least one novel had been written about the subject. He provides some detail of the case, saying that the people with whom he had gone to college at UNC while the case was being investigated had done very little else for several months besides discussing it. Everyone had a theory as to what had actually happened. Eventually, however, with plenty of money being passed around, the case went away and the story disappeared from the newspapers, with no one going to jail.
Ms. Holman had inherited a large sum of money in the name of her young son, who had then died in a mountain-climbing accident in 1950. He indicates that Ms. Holman had been a woman of tragedy all of her adult life and he supposes she was foreordained to it by the type of songs she sang and the way she sang them, with a sultry voice.
He regards her as being part of the younger days as much as Lena Horne and Ethel Merman were part of the present times, but with considerably less luck.
A letter from Christopher Crittenden, the director of the State Department of Archives and History in Raleigh, responds to an editorial of October 29, titled "On This Spot in 1775 … (Whoosh)", in which the newspaper suggested adoption of the Montana plan for historical markers to enable passersby safely to stop off the roadway and read them, without having to come to sudden stops, with placement of advance warning signs of the approach of the markers to eliminate safety hazards to other motorists. Mr. Crittenden indicates that the work was conducted in North Carolina cooperatively by the Departments of Archives and History, Conservation and Development, and Highway and Public Works, with the inscriptions prepared by Archives and History, then approved by a group of the state's leading historians, then ordered by Conservation and Development, and paid for by Highway and Public Works. He indicates that they were well aware of the problems which the editorial had raised and of the Montana program. He finds that one difficulty in adoption of the Montana approach was that their markers were made of wood and thus were not durable, whereas North Carolina markers were made of aluminum or iron and could be expected to last indefinitely. He says that they made a point of presenting the most important information at the top of the plaque so that if it was not possible to read all of the printed information, at least the passing motorists could obtain the important points. He provides examples. Prior to beginning the program in 1935, they had studied the Virginia system and had been advised to make the lettering as large as possible, and so most of the headings were in four-inch tall letters, with the body of the text being three inches in height in most cases. Each marker contained a key letter and number, which appeared in the Guide to North Carolina Historical Highway Markers, an updated edition of which becoming available within a few weeks, provided free from his department. The markers also had the same information on each side so that they could be viewed by motorists in either direction. They made an effort not to place them on curves or at inconvenient spots along the roadway, and if possible placed them where there was plenty of room for motorists to pull off to the side. They would have liked to provide a roadside park or complete turnout with each marker, but thus far, that had proved impracticable. He regards as a good idea the editorial's suggestion that a warning sign of approach be placed in advance of a marker in each direction, that they had considered doing so and would consider it again. They also recognized the need for larger markers, which they would provide if there were unlimited funding available. Each marker was checked eight or ten times before it was approved and no marker was erected containing statements based only on hearsay evidence or tradition, that there had to be contemporary, documentary, or other incontrovertible evidence to support the text. He says that the marker system had been praised by thousands of persons, both within and without the state.
A letter writer says that he had noted several letters to the editor, some violently objecting to the insistence by Recorder's Court Judge J. C. Sedberry, who had just lost the Congressional race to Republican Congressman Charles Jonas, that registered Democrats be required to vote Democratic in the primary elections and that if registered voters voted for one party or the other in the primary, they be limited to voting for the same party in the general election, or be stricken from the voter rolls. He finds that criticism of that statement seemed to derive from the confusion of the general election with the primary. He quotes from North Carolina law that at the time of a primary election, the voter would be asked to declare his party affiliation, and would be supplied only the ballots for that party, and that anyone could challenge the voter who was voting otherwise than his declared party affiliation. He thinks that anyone who voted in the general election contrary to their asserted party affiliation at the time of the primary ought be deprived, as the law provided, from participating in the next primary of that party.
Framed Edition
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